


Coda

by i_masshiro



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 09:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7972015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_masshiro/pseuds/i_masshiro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth was Ichigo Kurosaki knew despair, and he knew hope, and he knew these two things weren’t so different. They both shattered him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coda

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble written for this week's drabble prompt, "shattered" for deathberryprompts on tumblr.

Ichigo Kurosaki knew despair.

 

It wailed with the pitter-pattering refrain of June rain. It burned with the salt of tears blurring his vision and the pungent copper of blood filling his nose and swirling in his mouth. Despair shattered him – it battered and bruised him until he was disjointed pieces of himself, crying out into the night sky for those he loved.

 

_Mama?_

 

_Rukia?_

The refrain ends.

Ichigo Kurosaki knew despair but he also knew hope.

 

Hope was the white-hot fire of her reiatsu burning with his for the first time; the formless heat of her sword piercing him and baptizing him in her flames. That night he was born again and was dyed in her colors: the shinigami robes that billowed midnight black and snow white.

 

Hope. It was the ridiculously large sword in his hands – his solemn oath to protect – and it was etched in the timpani of his every heartbeat as he raced through Soul Society for her. His heartbeat, reminding him that: _he had to save her, he had to save he, he had to save her_.

 

Hope. He saw it in the wide violet pools of her eyes as she gaped at him and he grinned back with a confident, “yo”.

 

Hope. It was beautiful, he thought, blindingly beautiful.

 

But later, when she dissolved before him, her violet eyes glistening bright and pink lips parted with a gasp and the weight of words unsaid, he learned that hope was also violently cruel. It sent him soaring high with wax wings that would soon melt under the rage of the sun and send him plummeting back into despair. And again, he was shattered. He was left reeling, gasping, and grappling at this world without her that spun too fast for him to keep up.

 

_“Do you miss her?”_

_“Of course not.”_

 

Lies.

 

The truth was Ichigo Kurosaki knew despair, and he knew hope, and he knew these two things weren’t so different. They both shattered him, broke him into jagged, glass pieces of himself that pierced and cut him with each attempt to piece himself back together.

 

And in the pitter pattern of the June rain, he hears that refrain again: the familiar overture of despair as he crumples to his knees and begs Ginjo for his powers. He scrambles to his feet, his heart pounding desperately for the power to crush fate, and again hope swoops in with the white-hot flash of her reiatsu. The feeling is familiar – _it is home_ – with moonbeams blooming from his chest and enveloping him in its heat until he is again dyed in her colors.

 

“ _Ichigo_ ,” her voice – her smile – effortlessly stitches him back together and fuses together the gaps and cracks of his shattered glass pieces.

 

Ichigo Kurosaki knew despair, and he knew hope, and in the jagged edges where these two met, in the meridian of these two poles, he finds her and he is whole again.

 

“ _Rukia_ …”

 

A new movement begins.

 

( — _It is sweet and saccharine, a ballad in the sound of her voice. It starts like this: “show them, Ichigo, that despair cannot ever hope to stop you.”)_


End file.
